Climate and security risks are compounding in Yemen, impacting its population clearly and directly, but also through less visible, indirect effects. While violent conflict, at both the national and local levels, is likely to continue in the near future, the effects of climate change are projected to grow more pronounced over time. Problems including rising temperatures, rainfall variability, desertification, and vanishing water reserves are all set to intensify, exacerbating both the drivers and the effects of the conflict on the population. At the same time, this volatile security situation is decimating the natural environment, leading to a vicious, expanding cycle of insecurity. Such outcomes are complex, and likely to present themselves in a variety of ways.
The following dynamics are currently at play and are predicted to become more pronounced over time:
- Rising water insecurity will threaten livelihoods and contribute to further conflict.
- Climate change and conflict will drive displacement, worsening the human security of the most vulnerable.
- Climate change will further erode social cohesion.
- Extreme weather events will cost lives, damage infrastructure, and threaten intercommunity conflict.
- Urgent security risks will damage ecosystems in a negative feedback loop.
To manage these issues and mitigate their effects on the population, authorities must ensure that policies, particularly around sectors critical to climate change, peace, and security, consider the relationship between climate change and security dynamics. Currently, climate security is not adequately integrated into policies, with several key challenges inhibiting mainstreaming and implementation. These challenges are largely rooted in financial constraints and the ongoing war, which has halted functioning statehood with disastrous effects on the provision of basic services, let alone the realisation of policy ambitions regarding climate change and sustainable peace.
However, many mitigatable challenges are also preventing climate security mainstreaming in policy. These include a lack of institutional awareness, both around climate change and climate security links, technical capacity limitations, and critically - financial constraints. Due to these factors, in combination with the active conflict situation, neither climate security nor other climate change policies have been effectively implemented, with concerningly sparse action taken on the combined effects of environmental and security dynamics. While these very real constraints explain inaction, the necessity of managing and mitigating insecurity is only increasing. National, regional, and international actors are required to undertake efforts to support the climate security integration into policy and ensure implementation to all feasible extents. This roadmap proposes a recommended course of action for mainstreaming climate security into policymaking. Such efforts could include:
The recommendations were informed by extensive research and analysis carried out during the two-yearlong project. Stakeholders were engaged during a workshop held in September 2022 in Amman and in Cairo in March 2023. In addition, interviews were conducted with key interlocutors to ensure applicability at the national level, inclusive of constraints. However, due to challenging conditions, in-depth verification of recommendations by stakeholders has not yet been possible. Recommendations are subject to the resource constraints and information available at the time of writing. Policymakers are advised to exercise best judgement and invoke the expertise of local communities to guide implementation.
This text is an executive summary from the full report by Weathering Risk. This report is authored by Sinéad Barry Spencer McMurray and Nina Schmelzer, and can be found here.